Role Model’s Next Move? He’ll Figure It Out Onstage

Having his name in lights, being front and center on the stage or on screen was never part of Role Model ‘s plan. Mostly because, “I don’t like anything planned in a show,” he admits.

That might seem a bit stressful for someone who’s juggling a new album, a global tour and his upcoming acting debut in Lena Dunham ‘s Good Sex . But the 29-year-old artist, whose real name is Tucker Harrington Pillsbury, works better just rolling with the punches.

“People who have been to my shows know this is not a perfect show and there’s nothing planned and there’s nothing perfect about it,” he confesses while chatting with The Hollywood Reporter over Zoom from his Los Angeles home, days before Chuck On Tour kicked off last month. “I think if there had to be all these planned bits and moments, then I would be nervous because I’m not good at that.” Related Stories TV Allison Williams Talks 'Girls' (Before That Big Reveal), Eczema and Acting With Quentin Tarantino Music Eric Nam, Singer and 'The Traitors' Star, Signs with UTA (Exclusive)

It seems Role Model’s always been this way, even going back to his college days. While he initially went to Point Park University in Pittsburgh to study film, he didn’t anticipate what would happen next.

“While I was in film school, I stumbled across kids that were recording themselves, which I had never seen — just having a mic and Logic in their dorm rooms,” he recalls. “They were like, ‘You should just write a song and just try it.’ And I did and I fell in love with it.”

It wasn’t until the first song that he released under the moniker Role Model, “Cocaine Babe,” caught wind on SoundCloud in 2017 that he thought, “Oh, maybe this could be a thing.” He released his debut EP, Arizona in the Summer , that same year, which later caught Mac Miller’s attention. The late rapper helped turn his hobby into a full-fledged music career, leading him to later sign with Interscope Records.

Fast forward nearly a decade, several viral hits (“Blind” and “Hello!,” specifically), three EPs and two albums later, Role Model released his third studio album, Chuck Timely & the Hourglass , in August.

The concept was several years in the making, as he had been wanting to work on a secret side project and release music under a group called Chuck Timely and the Hourglass Band without telling his label. “That never happened,” Role Model says. “And then I was like, ‘Wait, this is a great name for an album.'”

While the singer never got to fully adopt the alias Chuck, that didn’t stop him and his producing team from channeling him throughout the creative process. “Every single day in the studio for months, all we would do was talk about Chuck and make up stories,” he tells THR . “It was a thing to represent what I was talking about on the album and also how we were producing it, but also it was just a fun thing to talk about.